Happy Halloween: Captions for Netflix and Horror Subtitling

With our huge enthusiasm for TV series and movies, it’s probably not surprising that Halloween is one of our favourite times of the year. We love working with captions for scary movies and shows, and have a range of top tips when it comes to captions for Netflix, translation, captioning and transcription.

Top Tips When Captioning Horror Content

• Research and choose your SDH subtitle descriptions carefully
• If you’re working with suspenseful content, be sure to add atmosphere by carefully describing any ‘sinister whispers’ or ‘ominous creaks.’
• Ensure you hit the right note with your horror sound effects
• Horror content is meant to be scary and suspenseful, but oftentimes it’s also highly gory. This element of horror can be really hard to caption without sounding amusing. When creating captions for horror, consider if you want the audience to gasp or laugh when a character is hit with an axe. A ‘terrified gurgle’ versus a ‘scary squelch’ can make that big difference.

Consider Caption and Subtitle Timing

• Timing is an area where horror and comedy face the same captioning challenges. Nothing kills a suspenseful moment like seeing beforehand what’s about to happen because the captions appear too early. Similarly, if a character hasn’t been identified, be sure not to identify that speaker, as it is typical for SDH captions. Imagine watching Scream for the first time and having a description of ‘Billy Loomis grunting’ prior to the big reveal of who the killer is! Ultimate horror no-no. If the listener doesn’t know it, neither should the watcher.

We love to go all out over Halloween, and this year being no different, Capital Captions Director, Jodene Antoniou, has enjoyed putting up a Halloweeny tree and creating Strange themed party boxes, in honour of her favourite show on Netflix. Whilst we’re choosing to share the pictures, these party boxes have been created for recreational purposes only, are not for sale and are solely for personal family use by Capital Captions partners, Jodene and Anthony Antoniou over Halloween festive period.

Each box is styled to look exactly like a retro VHS tape, following the eighties theme and has included a notepad, pen and velvet dice bag to follow the D&D theme; bathbombs, chocolate bars for Dustin’s pet, (Dart); a splendid box of super retro sweeties and  finally, a budget handheld gaming machine (eighties style).

We hope you enjoy Halloween as much as we do and have a Super Spooky Festive Time!

Capital Captions offer broadcast captioning services in formats required by Netflix. These include SCC, EBU-STL, DFXP, EBU-TT and more. We also work with audio description services, describing the visual elements of video content for visually impaired viewers and ASL and BSL interpreting for Deaf and Hard of Hearing viewers that use either British or American Sign Language. All this, along with voiceovers, translations, transcription and dubbing means our clients can order a fully comprehensive package to ensure video content is fully accessible for a huge range of target audiences. 

If you are after a specific service then why not click on the button below for your quote today.